Posted on 11/14/2016 5:53:14 PM PST by Be Careful
Remember when everyone was saying ..."By a Date Certain"?...that was something that Hillary said for some reason that all the libs thought sounded cool....By A Date Certain was EVERYWHERE....
Lately it has been the word "Tranche"....this comes from the Wikileaks Dumps.....everyone thinks it sounds cool.....
But now...All the Talking Heads are using the word "Decimate"....
Decimate is not a synonym of 'Annihilate'.
Per Urban Dictionary:
It means to 'Reduce by One Tenth'
A frequently misused word.
Decimate literally means to reduce something by a tenth, but many people use it instead to mean "totally destroy." The word "obliterate" would be a better choice than "decimate."
Decimate comes from the root "deci-" which can be found in other words involving ten, "decimal" for example.
When I decimated the cookies I ate ten out of the hundred-cookie batch.
Joe decimated the rock collection by getting rid of one tenth of the rocks.
The buttercups and snowflakes were literally shaking.
I’ve thought that they’ve conflated the word with “devastate”.
decimated is reducing TO 1/10. wiping out 9/10.
So everyone’s gotten the memo?
Apparently, everyone has received the memo....the word is everywhere....
Decimation was a form of collective punishment used in ancient Rome and inflicted upon a Roman Legion that had mutinied, refused orders, deserted or fled a battlefield as cowards.
It consisted of lining up the soldiers at attention and killing every tenth man with a sword.
The word comes from the Roman method of punishing military units. They would execute every tenth soldier.
Never made sense to me but it supposedly worked.
That was a better explanation than mine.
The 10% chosen by lot would be clubbed to death by the other 90%.
LOL!
No, Decimation (Latin: decimatio; decem = “ten”) was a form of military discipline used by senior commanders in the Roman Army to punish units or large groups guilty of capital offences, such as mutiny or desertion. The word decimation is derived from Latin meaning “removal of a tenth”.
However in digital signal processing, you are correct. When the term decimation is used in DSP is does not specifcally require a factor of ten, as you can decimate by 2 or any other number. But if you decimate by 10 you delete 9 out of 10 samples, reducing the sample rate by a factor of 10.
Regardless, the youts are using it incorrectly based on the original definition.
when referring to punishment technique, you are correct.
in all other ways describing destruction, it is the definition I cite. it is for a vast majority percentage of destruction.
As I understand the word’s history, it was a motivational technique used by the Romans on their own legions, following poor performance in battle.
The ‘youts’....I know what Joe Pesci movie you have been watching!
NO!!!
"Deci", the Latin for ten. Decimate was to punish a Roman legion by killing every tenth man.
This is Free Republic. You get it wrong, and people WILL jump down your throat and tap dance on your lungs...
You don't get a free pass because Leftist idiots misuse a word or phrase.
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/decimation
1. to destroy a great number or proportion of
2. to select by lot and kill every tenth person of
3. (obsolete) to take a tenth of or from
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